GHR partner, Twin Cities-based St. Jerome Catholic School, provides Pre-K to 8 education to over 200 students, preparing them for the academic, social, and spiritual opportunities and challenges they may face in today's world. With talented, supportive teachers and staff, and a keen eye for data and intentional planning, the school strives for consistent academic growth. In the past five years, the school has welcomed a large community of multi-lingual learners who are part of a Karen refugee community. Word has spread that the school is a safe, nurturing and excellent school home for many recent immigrants from Myanmar and Burma, where children will find their social and emotional needs met. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to virtual instruction, many students at St. Jerome missed significant amounts of instruction time. This has led to observable learning loss, particularly among the many emergent bilingual students still developing their expertise in academic English. In addressing the same, St. Jerome’s principal has identified middle school students as the target population to participate in a new educational model of direct instruction, small group interventions and homework assistance for the next three years in their learning journey. 

With support from GHR for this new model, the school is providing targeted instruction for core subjects, hired an additional English teacher, and hired an intervention specialist who will work directly with students and teachers to monitor student progress and implement changes. “With the small class sizes and a significant amount of 1:1 instruction that has been able to occur, we have seen students go from below to above grade level in their language usage scores. Also, students who are already highly achieving are getting above grade level instruction allowing them to stretch," said Teacher Emma McGlone.

Students are already showing signs of benefiting academically from these interventions – an uplifting sign for the future of this project. A middle school student shared, “We can work at our own pace and we get attention according to what we need, because the teachers know us really well.” 

GHR works to design new and replicable models for high-quality Catholic education. Learn more about this work here. 

From The Opus College of Business and Schulze School of Entrepreneurship Newsroom:

"Brianna Edwards has a big, bold and flavorful dream.

The creator behind a line of low-sodium spice mixes, LOV3 IT S3ASONING, Edwards wants to see her bottles on store shelves across the country. To get there, she’s turned to the University of St. Thomas and the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship.

Edwards is part of the very first cohort of the Community Entrepreneurship Program. The 10-month, hands-on program, offered in conjunction with the Small Business Development Center, supports aspiring Twin Cities entrepreneurs as they develop big ideas and prepare for life as small business owners. 

'I’m a really big dreamer,” Edwards said. 'I’ve had to learn to take it step by step. This program helped me figure out that this is a marathon not a sprint.'"

Through our Twin Cities Racial Equity (TCRE) initiative, GHR works to be of service to and in partnership with Black, Indigenous, and people of color, (BI-POC) businesses and communities in the development and acquisition of assets that advance and provide access to economic opportunity and community development. Learn more about our work here and read more about the University of St. Thomas Community Entrepreneurship Program here. 

The GHR Fellows Program at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business aims to support and strengthen students as principled leaders capable of creating enduring value for society. The program is grounded in the shared values of GHR and the University of St. Thomas, of working in service to the common good.

The fellowship program is funded by a $50M grant to UST from the Foundation. Ten students are added each year as incoming freshmen to this highly competitive, transformational undergraduate experience for students pursuing careers in business. Fellows receive full-tuition scholarships to the University of St. Thomas and customized programming designed to deliver leadership experiences, including global exposure. The first cohort of GHR Fellows graduates in the spring of 2023.

​Made in partnership with UST, this video features interviews with a few of the GHR Fellows, as they reflect on their accomplishments so far, and consider the promise of what lies ahead.
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As the GHR Foundation Board and staff came together in solidarity, community and celebration at the end of 2022, this video offered a reminder of how we have all lived deeply into creating enduring value in an ever-changing world around us, alongside our partners. 
 

From The Star Tribune: 

"For 73 years, St. Pascal school has operated in St. Paul — now the last remaining Catholic grade school on the East Side, where many used to send their graduates off to high school in crowded yellow buses or in cars with tape decks blasting.

Still, its enrollment has fallen, and there have been worries about St. Pascal's future.

But as of this month, the school has new life — thanks to a consortium of schools tailored to urban families in need. St. Pascal is joining Ascension Catholic Academy, a Minneapolis-based group that has provided centralized leadership and other supports to three other Twin Cities Catholic schools since 2016."

Read more. 

From Pioneer Press: 

"Early in the morning in November 2019, Inna Collier Paske, principal of St. Pascal Regional School, had a vision. “God talked to me at that time. He asked me why I work at St. Pascal, and I said it’s because I want to share my faith,” she said.

Her school’s enrollment was dropping fast, and so was financial support from parishioners.

School officials came up with four pillars for the East Side school to live by: “Believe, Learn, Love and Connect.” Students posted strong test scores, even during the coronavirus pandemic.

And earlier this month, the school was welcomed into a consortium that should secure St. Pascal’s future at a time when many Catholic schools have been forced to close.

The consortium, Ascension Catholic Academy, was created in 2016 with major support from the GHR Foundation, founded by commercial real estate developer Gerald Rauenhorst and his wife, Henrietta. The pair, in life and in death, have applied much of their philanthropy to supporting Catholic education.

The foundation, now run by their daughter, Amy Goldman, sought in 2015 to establish a new model for funding Catholic schools."

Read more. 

From The Catholic Spirit:

"Founded in 1993 out of five Minneapolis Catholic schools — Holy Name, Holy Rosary, Incarnation, St. Albert the Great and St. Stephen — Risen Christ is best known for its immersion program. With the school’s “50/50 model,” students receive 50% of their instruction in English each day and 50% in Spanish. Every student receives daily instruction in English and Spanish literacy. Grade-level teaching teams include one teacher fluent in English and one fluent in Spanish.

The effort began with the fall 2014 kindergarten class, and one grade has been added each year. Today, only eighth-graders did not start under the immersion program.

That model attracted Sonia Rosas, 28, of Minneapolis, and her husband, Jose, to Risen Christ. They have a 10-year-old daughter in third grade, and a 6-year-old daughter in kindergarten. In choosing the school, Sonia Rosas said it was important that students learn in Spanish and English, that it is a Catholic school, and she heard that people at the school “are very supportive with families and have a deep understanding (of) the culture and the language.”"

Read more. 

Seed-funded by GHR last year as part of a shared racial equity exploration, the newly launched Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Campus Center at the University of St. Thomas will serve as a central hub to foster and strengthen racial justice and inclusion programs.

It will provide several programming initiatives, including academic partnerships and training with the St. Thomas faculty, racial healing for Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, interfaith programs and culture in relation to BIPOC communities, and social justice and campus transformation. 

​Learn more.

From February 20th to May 9th, 2022, a TV ad across the Upper Midwest will spotlight the GHR Fellows Program at the Opus College of Business. Aimed at developing business leaders who are ethically minded, innovative, community engaged and globally aware, the program is rooted in the shared values of the Foundation and the University of St. Thomas, grounded in Catholic Social Justice – of working in service of the common good.  

The fellowship program is funded by a $50M grant to UST from the Foundation. Ten students are added each year as freshmen to this highly competitive, transformational undergraduate experience for students pursuing careers in business. Fellows receive full-tuition scholarships to the University of St. Thomas and customized programming designed to deliver leadership experiences, including global exposure.
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Learn more.

Implemented in schools serving predominantly under-resourced neighborhoods and families, City Connects helps teachers and schools provide integrated supports to address the in- and out-of-school needs of students and foster their strengths. Providing holistic support to students facing external obstacles to learning is a core aspect of GHR's Education strategy in Twin Cities Catholic schools and animates the Foundation’s long-term partnership with the program. 

City Connects is a signature program of the Drexel Mission Schools in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. A significant new investment from an anonymous donor will ensure the sustainability of the program by endowing the Center at Boston College, sustaining City Connects programming to better the lives of even more children while supporting the growing needs of communities across the nation. 

Founded in 2001 by Dr. Mary Walsh and her colleagues in the Boston Public Schools, City Connects has provided especially critical support for schoolchildren and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Center for Optimized Student Support, the home of City Connects at Boston College, will be renamed the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children in Dr. Walsh’s honor. 

Learn more.

​GHR Foundation believes education can transform an individual as it did Gerry Rauenhorst, one of our founders, a first-generation college student and a St. Thomas alum. The beginning of this school year marks a point of pride for GHR, as the inaugural cohort of GHR Fellows begins their first year at the University of St. Thomas.

A partnership between GHR Foundation and the St. Thomas Opus College of Business, the GHR Fellows program is an endowed scholarship for business majors. This highly competitive program is designed to attract future business leaders who exemplify the mission of the university and model GHR values: globally-minded, ethics-oriented changemakers who embody the entrepreneurial spirit, and seek to create enduring value for society.

Ten GHR Fellows have been selected to receive scholarships providing them with full tuition for four years, a fully funded J-Term study abroad experience, curated programming, customized social entrepreneurship opportunities and more. In offering this scholarship, the university will be able to recruit and retain excellent students who might not otherwise have access to such an opportunity. 

Representing a diverse range of backgrounds, the inaugural cohort of GHR Fellows is composed of ten students with outstanding track records, of extraordinary promise, who bring with them a variety of enriching experiences, skills and stories.

Tri Nhan Pham, a first-generation student born in Vietnam and raised in Shakopee, MN, said of the program: “My goal is simple: to leave a legacy that my mom would be proud of. I am ready and excited to take on everything that St. Thomas and the GHR Fellows program has to offer.” 

Learn more about GHR’s support of innovative, high-quality education at Marquette University, St. Catherine University and the University of St. Thomas by visiting our Higher Education Initiative.